


Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

by violentdarlings



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, British Men of Letters, Canon Compliant, Christmas Party, Ketch and Mick avoid socialising by hiding in a closet, M/M, Missing Scene, Pre-Season/Series 12, that's it that's the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 07:03:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13141527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violentdarlings/pseuds/violentdarlings
Summary: The British Men of Letters Christmas party, 2015.The last Christmas before everything changed.





	Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

Mick drains another glass of cheap champagne without so much as a flicker of aversion to the taste. He’s been drinking straight liquor since he was a teenager; champagne barely even registers as alcohol at this point.

The Men of Letters Christmas party is the same every year. As ever, it is held at Kendrick’s, the school empty but for the handful of students holed up in the dorms, kids with nowhere to go for the winter break. Mick had been one of them, decades and a lifetime ago, plucked from the streets and given an education lethal enough to qualify him as a walking weapon. Not that he’s a field man anymore. Administration is far better suited to his skills.

He knows everyone here. From the old boys and Dr Hess all the way down to Kendrick’s newest graduates, it is a compulsory directive to attend the Men of Letters Christmas party. Only participation in deep undercover work is accepted as an excuse; Mick knows Ketch was hoping to avoid this year’s calamity, but the other man got back from Scotland only three days ago, having put down a particularly feisty kelpie. So he’s here.

Speaking of Ketch…

Mick can just make out the other man on the far side of the room. They’ve been paired together more and more of late; Mick the administrator and lore expert, Ketch the man in the field, the bullets and the fists.

Ketch is charming some pretty thing with starry eyes and long blonde hair. Mick eyes them across the room, seeing them with an analyst’s eyes only. It’s becoming easier, to turn off his emotions with qualm. Perhaps he should be concerned about that.

The girl: obviously not Men of Letters – too sweet, too open – so someone’s girlfriend then, or someone’s family. Dangerous territory. Looks vaguely familiar; expensive black dress, Christian Louboutin heels, diamond earrings. Silver bracelet, also expensive – Mick squints, and just barely makes out a pentagram charm, among other assorted protection symbols.

Ketch: tall, dark, incredibly well-dressed, and a sociopath. Merciless, brutal, sadistic, and charming. Never a good combination –

Except Arthur manages to wear it so well.

Mick casts his gaze around, and sees Dr Hess, seated by the fire with most of the other officers, glaring in Ketch’s direction. The resemblance strikes Mick in the moment between heartbeats; he’s seen a picture of the girl in Hess’s office, beaming astride a horse.

She’s Hess’s niece. Or great-niece, whatever.

And Ketch is smiling like he’s a hairbreadth away from fucking her in a broom closet.

 

Mick lets go of Ketch’s arm – he’d had him by the wrist, grip hard enough that Ketch could not shake loose. “What the hell, Davies?” Ketch asks. His usual affable (but entirely artificial) expression is gone, replaced by a dangerous, burgeoning fury. Forget a woman scorned; hell hath no fury like Arthur Ketch thwarted.

Mick slams the door to the broom closet behind them. After all, it’s not the closet he’s got a problem with.

“I saw you with that girl,” he says to Ketch. “You were going to fuck her.” Ketch sneers.

“Go _fuck_ yourself, Sherlock Holmes,” he says, voice like acid. “I could have that little piece’s ankles up around her ears by now if you hadn’t dragged me off like a fucking wanker.” There’s the faintest slur to his words. Ketch is _drunk_. Mick can’t remember the last time he saw Ketch even the slightest bit tipsy, let alone all the way pissed.

“You’ve lost the plot, mate,” Mick tells him briskly. “She’s Hess’s grandniece, and you’re an idiot for even looking at her. The old bitch would fillet you if you’d put your dick in one of her precious family.”

Ketch sobers. Well, he doesn’t _sober up_ , per se, but he does stop scowling.

“Christ on a cracker,” he says. “I didn’t know.” Mick relaxes, relieved that Ketch looks less like he’s going to take a swing at him.

“Well, now you do,” Mick replies, and fishes around in a cupboard. “Aha.” He holds up the whisky bottle triumphantly. “Knew I’d left this around here.”

Ketch is smiling – not his usual social smile, but the real one, the barest flicker of amusement. “Has that been here since last year?” he inquires, and takes a slug of Glenfiddich. “Or since you graduated?” He checks the date on bottle. “Obviously not since you graduated,” he finishes dryly, and drinks again.

Mick snatches for the bottle, and misses by about a foot. So not as unaffected as he thought, then. “Shut up,” he tells Ketch eloquently. “Give me my whisky or I’ll thump you.” Ketch chuckles. The sound goes through Mick like lightning.

“Like you could,” Ketch replies. Mick nods, easing into the banter.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re a battlefield bruiser and I’m a paper pusher. You know I did go through the same physical training that you did, you daft prick.” Ketch nods thoughtfully.

“I suppose you did.” There’s a glint in his eyes Mick doesn’t like the look of. “Want to spar and see who comes out on top?” Mick smirks.

“I’m not that stupid.” He makes the mistake of looking down; the light in here isn’t too good, and a shadow catches his eye. The shadow turns out to be the outline of Ketch’s clearly hard dick through his trousers. “You’ve got a bit of a problem there,” Mick says, nodding to Ketch’s crotch. Ketch looks down at himself as though he hadn’t even noticed his erection was there.

“Fuck,” Ketch says. Mick smirks.

“Got yourself all worked up thinking about that bird and her ankles?” he jibes gently. He’s very, very drunk, and he knows it, because sober Mick knows better than to tease someone as lethal as Ketch.

“Shut up,” the other man grouses. Mick eyes him. Ketch is not flushing, because he’s not the kind of man that feels shame. Mainly he just looks randy.

“Want a hand?” Mick asks, and honestly cannot believe the words have come out of his mouth.

It is the closest to startled Mick has ever seen Ketch allow himself. “I’m not –” he starts; Mick laughs in spite of himself.

“God, Ketch, neither am I. It’s just a fucking hand. Surely you wanked someone off in the dorms like the rest of us?” Ketch huffs.

“Schoolboy antics are different to –” Mick yawns.

“Whatever, man. You want me to jerk you off or not?” Ketch looks at him for a moment.

“I need the wall to hold me up,” he says abruptly, and stumbles over to the wall. “Do it from behind.”

Mick raises an eyebrow. “Fair enough,” he replies, and moves forward, until he can reach around (ha) and get his arm half wrapped around the other man.

Ketch sighs, and leans his head against the wall. Mick, still drunk enough that this seems like a good idea, unfastens Ketch’s trousers, reaches in to find Ketch already half hard and getting firmer by the minute.

Mick throttles the instinctive urge to whistle. He can’t see it, but judging from the feel of Ketch’s dick in his hand, he can see where the man gets (at least part) of his absurd self-confidence from. Mick is quite sure the rest of that self-assurance comes from Ketch being a sociopath, but still, wow.

“Well?” Ketch prompts. Mick could write a thesis on why Ketch doesn’t want to do this face to face, on latent homosexual urges, toxic masculinity, and the power of sheer denial, but he’s too pissed to remember how to spell thesis and anyway, he’s got a task at hand.

Luckily, if there’s one thing Mick is good at, it’s wanking. Well, wanking and drinking. And coming to work drunk. And his job.

Anyway.

He starts slow, steady, swiping his hand over the pre-come at the head, settling into a quick, hard rhythm. Ketch seems to be trying to keep quiet, but Mick knows how to work a cock; in short order he has Ketch breathing sharply, his hips making shallow thrusts to pump himself in and out of Mick’s grip.

Mick’s forgotten how _boring_ masturbating another bloke is. Aside from the distinct power trip of reducing someone as lethal as Ketch to gasps and moans, this is taking longer than he would like.

“Come the fuck on, Ketch, you’re gonna give me carpal tunnel,” Mick appeals dryly. Ketch groans and thuds his head hard on the wall.

“Davies, I’m so plastered it’s a miracle I can even get it up,” he bites out. Mick muffles a laugh against the taller man’s shoulder. When had he got so close to Ketch, when had the loose hold of convenience turned into a full embrace, Mick’s chest and hips pressed to Ketch’s back and arse?

 _Fuck._ He could rub his dick up against Ketch, if he wasn’t sure the other man would turn around and thump him for it. Mick’s cock is hard and leaking, pressed against the seam of his own suit trousers.

To hell with it. Mick grinds forward, his hand not pausing where he’s working Ketch’s prick, and Ketch, rather than decking Mick for the impertinence, gasps a ragged oath and shoves back, until Mick can comfortably rub his erection against the lush curve of Ketch’s arse. He has to brace his other hand on the wall to keep them both upright, but Ketch doesn’t seem to mind. The sound he makes when Mick cages him in is guttural, almost like a snarl, and heat pools low in Mick’s gut.

“Get a flaming move on, Ketch,” he snaps, and leans up to bites Ketch’s ear for emphasis. Arthur shudders, his head twisted to the side, baring the pale vulnerability of his neck, shoulders braced against the wall like he can barely remain upright.

“Again,” Ketch mutters. Mick isn’t sure what the fuck he means, but he takes a chance, nips Ketch’s ear hard enough to draw blood. Ketch’s dick pulses in Mick’s grip.

“That’s it,” Mick tells him, but he’s not sure the other man can hear. Ketch is coming, a low moan deep in his throat, his hips arching into Mick’s hand in a sharp, staccato burst before easing into shudders. Mick sighs, rests his head on the dip between Ketch’s shoulder blades just for a moment, before moving his hand away, covered in come. Like, a _lot_ of come. Ketch must have been hard up for it, Mick muses as he crosses the small space to wipe his hand off on a nearby mop head, and snickers quietly to himself.

When he turns back, Ketch has straightened up and turned around. He’s tucked his dick back into his trousers and zipped himself up, and is making a significant attempt at his usual genial expression, although for once Mick can see straight through it. Ketch is wrecked, his breathing still uneven, a lock of dark hair falling over his forehead into his eyes. Man needs a haircut, Mick thinks idly, and puts it on the list.

“Drink?” Mick asks, but Ketch has other ideas. With a determined (if slightly manic and distinctly concerning) glint in his eyes, he strides forwards, removes the bottle from Mick’s hands, and sets it down, crowding into Mick’s space. Ketch gets one arm around his back, hand gripping one shoulder almost painfully, and has the other unfastening Mick trousers. Mick thinks about saying no, about protesting. He’s not sure Ketch would even listen.

“Kind of you,” Mick says instead, just the right amount of amusement in his voice (he aced his seduction classes twenty years ago, and he hasn’t lost the knack). “A hand for a hand, is that it, Ketch?” A sound rumbles through Arthur’s chest that could be either a growl or a suppressed chuckle; Mick feels the echo of it in his bones.

“Shut up,” Ketch murmurs, almost gently, and Mick surrenders, allowing Ketch to hold him upright, his head pressed to the bigger man’s shoulder.

Fuck, that shouldn’t be as hot as it is, the size of Ketch, the lethality of him, all bent on Mick, the focal point of that singular ferocity. Ketch has his hand in Mick’s pants, but all he can bear is three quick, hard jerks before Mick is spilling, wet and hot, into Ketch’s elegant, cross-inked hand. He’s always had a hair trigger when he’s pissed and anyway, Ketch is arrogant enough to probably take it as a compliment.

Ketch makes a noise of distinct displeasure. “Did you have to get come on my hand, Davies?” he asks. Mick grins at him, fuck-drunk and dopey with endorphins.

“It sounds so weird in your posh accent, guv,” he says, emphasizing his own, so uncommon in the Men of Letters world of upper class sensibilities, privilege and entitled arseholes. “Besides, you’re not the one with it in your pants.” Ketch crinkles his nose.

“True,” he allows. Mick grimaces and tugs out his handkerchief, cleaning himself up as well as he can, considering. It’s not the worst thing he’s ever had in his pants – blood and shifter guts come to mind, from his days in training, although he still doesn’t remember quite how entrails got into his trousers from his shirt.

Ketch is eyeing the rest of the Glenfiddich. “Think there’s enough there to get us from plastered to completely fucked before the end of the party?” he asks. Mick considers it, glancing at his watch.

“Four hours to go,” he replies. Ketch groans, of an entirely different sort to when Mick has Ketch’s dick in his hand. “No, the booze won’t last, but if we sneak out later for some of the good Russian vodka that Professor Yegorovich keeps in the second drawer of his filing cabinet…” Ketch manages a full grin, for once, and it reminds Mick of the boy he’d met twenty years ago, who still had something like life in his eyes.

“You’re the ideas man, Mick,” he says, and thumps Mick rather hard on the shoulder in solidarity, before dropping gracelessly to the floor to lean against a cupboard. “You do the thinking. I get shit done. We make a damn fine team.”

They don’t, not really, but Mick’s feeling too good to argue, to pay attention to the faint warning bells chiming in the back of his head, the alarm that has been ringing quietly in the back of his mind for months. He sits down next to Ketch, just close enough that their shoulders occasionally touch, and gulps down the whisky. It’s a worry for another day.

Something is coming. He’s just not sure what.

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate titles for this fic:
> 
> 'Tis The Season To Hate Everyone  
> Last Christmas I Gave You My Dick  
> I Saw Davies Kissing Mr Ketch  
> Dr Hess Got Run Over By A Reindeer  
> You're A Naughty One, Mr Ketch  
> Have Yourself An Alcoholic Christmas


End file.
